Educational Products

Bridging the Gap Between Past and Present

Stories can spread ideas, challenge long-held beliefs, and create powerful movements. On this page, you will find a growing library of AGF produced, partnered, co-branded and/or supported content that brings Andy’s story into public view.

“Carolyn Goodman’s life was punctuated by tragedy—a brother’s premature death, childhood molestation, teenaged abortion, a mother’s callousness, a father’s suicide, a son’s infamous murder, and the loss of two husbands. But hers is foremost a tale of survival, of turning personal anguish into social conscience. When her twenty-year-old son, Andy, was one of three civil rights volunteers to disappear in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, the story galvanized the nation. The names Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner still spark raw emotion in those who recall the era’s turmoil. Carolyn Goodman turned her son’s martyrdom into a mission.”

“Dr. Goodman was not just a history maker. She made the future by standing up for those whom no one saw kneeling, by speaking for those whom no one heard crying, and by fighting for those whom no one knew were hurting.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren

The Andrew Goodman Foundation provided financial support for the 2010 reissue of this groundbreaking photographic chronicle by legendary photographer Danny Lyon. In the original 1992 edition, Julian Bond wrote in the forward, “Danny Lyon took pictures for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1962 to 1964… He was as idealistic as the rest of us… Inquisitive, New York-y, rumpled, he joined the band of brothers and circle of trust as the first of several fine photographers who documented, recorded, and froze the movement and its supporters and opponents into black and white.” The 2010 reissue of this pivotal book of magnificent photographs and journalistic essays featured an afterward by Congressman John Lewis.

“Neshoba tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of the civil rights workers. Although Klansmen bragged openly about what they did in 1964, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted preacher Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old notorious racist and alleged mastermind of the killings. Through intimate interviews with the families of the victims, candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County Citizens, and exclusive, first time interviews with Killen, the film explores whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth.”

Released in 2008, Neshoba was funded, in part, through grants from The Andrew Goodman Foundation. Read more about this award-winning documentary film here, and watch the trailer below:

The Modern Civil Rights Movement Chartwheel journeys into the history of the most transformative era of the Movement. It reveals the connectedness between legal and social actions and reactions; the enduring debates regarding the powers of the federal government, states rights, individual rights and collective protections. The Right to Vote Chartwheel dynamically connects and frames America’s turbulent voting rights history from 1787 to 2012. The struggle to achieve, expand and protect the voting rights franchise for all citizens is delineated with astonishing clarity – revealing the inseparable connection between the past, present and future.

The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell was published on the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Summer murders. David Goodman, President of The Andrew Goodman Foundation, says, “this is quite simply the best book on this subject for young people. It’s my hope that in reading this book and learning the story of James, Mickey, and my brother Andy, young people will be inspired to take action in support of civil rights, social justice, and dignity for all people.”

In his epic treatise, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, renowned sociologist and historian, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, commenting on the legacy of Slavery in our country said, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” More than a hundred years after he wrote those words, the racial struggles in the United States remain the most pervasive theme in our history. Slavery, the Civil War, and nearly a century of racial segregation stand as stains on the moral fabric of the United States. Notwithstanding, the election and re-election of America’s first African-American President of the United States, frank discussions on race relations in America and the historical impact of the institution of slavery upon our current society remain problematical. The events in Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore, Staten Island, NY, and Charleston, SC in 2015 indicate “a fierce urgency of now” for our nation, once and for all, to confront the reality of the consequential impact of the legacy of slavery upon the current attitudes and conduct of the descendants of slaves and slaveholders.

Through an in-depth examination of the long history of white supremacy and the black struggle against it, this 15-week course taught by Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King’s personal lawyer, chief strategist, and speechwriter at the University of San Francisco, is designed to enable honest and critical discussion about race in America. Readings, lectures, and activities focus on events and individuals that have decisively shaped and influenced America’s efforts to abolish slavery and address its historical consequences and subsequent efforts to create a society based on values of racial equality and social justice.